


Distances

by MercuryGray



Category: Little Women (2019), Little Women Series - Louisa May Alcott
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Children, Covid-19 Related, F/M, Frustration, Isolation, Parenthood, Paris (City), Supportive Spouses, World Travel, Writing, being children, social distancing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:35:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23271076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: A Modern March AU - In the midst of global pandemic, the March and Brooke families are trying hold it together.Series of prompts done for Tumblr.
Relationships: John Brooke/Margaret March
Comments: 21
Kudos: 23
Collections: Lock Down Fest





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Done for a prompt: Meg and John Brooke, social

John Brooke did not consider himself a reactionary man. He had handled the transition to online classes with unease but grace, moving his high school English classes from the grubby desk at the public school to the cramped confines of the office-slash-craft room in their small bungalow. He had not urged his wife to go out and buy anything except their regular groceries, and didn’t say anything when she came home with three weeks worth of food anyway, muttering about perhaps making jam while she had ‘so much free time’.

But when there is a bang, a shout, and a howl of pain from the other side of the house it bears investigating.

The TV was still warbling Daniel Tiger in the front room. There was Demi, hands full of paint, joyfully swirling a mess onto the easel (and doing a Jackson Pollock number on the floor beneath at the same time) and Daisy running in circles with the laundry basket on her head, the socks it had previously contained in a somewhat neat lump on the living room floor. But of his wife there was no sign.

It felt a little bit like the apocalypse had hit. “Demi, sweetie, where’s Mommy?”

“Don’t know,” Demi said, hardly looking up from his in-progress masterpiece. Three year olds. Sometimes you were a parent they couldn’t let go of and sometimes you were on another planet. John resisted rolling his eyes and continued his search.

He had checked the kitchen, the loft, the basement laundry, and the guest bathroom, and was just about to see about the backyard until he realized the bathroom door in their bedroom was closed - and from behind the white four panel door there was the unmistakable sound of crying.

He tapped on the door. “Meg? You in there?”

Behind the door there was a titanic sniffle, followed by the most miserable sounding “No, I’m not.”

John took a deep breath and cracked open the door, finding his wife wedged behind it, sitting with her head down and arms wrapped her knees, a little ball of motherly despair. She looked up with bleary eyes,

“I can’t do it anymore, John! I just can’t! Not for ten more days! Or longer. I’ve washed everything I can wash, I’ve tried every enriching educational thing I can think of! I cannot have my only social interaction for two weeks be my three year old children!”

"And what am I, chopped liver?“ John asked, meaning for it to be funny and knowing, immediately, that it had been the wrong thing to say. "I’m sorry. That was rude. I have not been very helpful the last couple of days, and I apologize.” I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten, and I’m sorry. I had my classes and my students and you had nothing but back to back episodes of children’s TV and non-stop sanitizing. It was true - he’d been so wrapped up in trying to put his entire curriculum online (complete with memes and appropriate pop culture references) that he hadn’t really made any time for his family.

The tears looked like they were going to start again. “But you’ve had classes to write, and the students need you - “

Oh, Saint Meg, always thinking she had to be all things to all people. John wedged his way inside the bathroom and sat down next to his wife, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and pulling her adorably messy head towards him. “And my wife needs me, too,” he said, petting her hair and tucking in a few flyaways. “Let me hose off Demi and take the kids for a walk. We will stay,” he added, as Meg looked about ready to protest, “six feet away from everyone and I won’t let them touch a thing and you can have some alone time. You will not clean a thing until I get back. I will take care of the floor in the front room. The socks can wait.” 

“Thank you,” she said, her voice small. John planted a kiss on the top of her head, already thinking of the texts he would send while the kids were running ahead of the stroller - to Marmee, advising her to call, to Jo, asking to read aloud at bedtime, to himself, to set calendar reminders to uphold his end of his marriage vows that promised to be there in sickness and in health.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quarantine prompt: Amy and Laurie stuck in Paris.

It was meant to be a short trip to Paris - a musical residency for Laurie, time with the world’s greatest art collections for Amy. They were going to eat pastries at cute street-side bistro tables and take ridiculously sweet photos for Instagram, and take long walks on the river, and Laurie would wear a beret to make her laugh (though, she thought, it suited him far better than she wanted to admit).

That, of course, was before. Now the concert hall was closed, all of Laurie’s performances had been postponed indefinitely, the Louvre (and everything else, for that matter) was closed, and they had discovered just how small their rental apartment really was.

“And I’m so bored, Marmee,” Amy complained to her mother, curled into the most comfortable corner of the chair in the bedroom, the door closed so that Laurie could have the front room for his piano practice. “I thought Paris was going to be fun, and now we’re both miserable and I’m fairly certain Laurie can’t stand the sight of me any more.”

“Well, you could be here, being bored and miserable,” Marmee pointed out with her characteristic reason. “I just got off the phone with your sister. I think she’d appreciate a call, when you can work out the time difference. John says she’s having a hard time with the twins.”

Amy contemplated the relative size of John and Meg’s house, the antics of her niece and nephew, and the feelings she’d run through herself in the last week, and suddenly felt very blessed indeed. It must have showed on her face, for her mother smiled. “See? Count your blessings. Try something new, like…baking bread, or embroidery. Learn how to cook polenta. Have your neighbors sit for portraits. Isn’t everyone singing on their balconies?”

“That’s Italy, mom.”

Marmee shrugged. “Well, do something like that. ” Something on her screen seemed to distract her mother for a moment, and she paused, looking away from the camera. “I’m sorry, Ames, I have to go, they need me at work.”

“Be safe, Mom,” Amy urged. “I love you!”

But her mother was already gone. Amy stared briefly at the still image of her mother and felt homesick. If they were at home, Marmee would have craft supplies and things for them to do to help someone, packaging food or sewing masks or signing people up for a blood drive. But here, in Paris, Amy was helpless to do any of those things - and she was on her own.

She checked her watch and sighed - time to think about dinner and another iteration of whatever was in the apartment’s laughably small fridge or brave another trip to the shops. She’d come to Paris to eat good food, and now they were bouncing between mac and cheese, eggs, and sandwiches, which were about the only things Amy felt safe cooking.

She was trying to remember what was in the fridge when she realized there was music in the front room.

She nudged the bedroom door open to investigate, mindful that Laurie didn’t like to be disturbed while he was practicing. But this wasn’t practice - her husband had dragged his keyboard onto their balcony, his fingers flying through Mendelssohn’s The Bee’s Wedding, his body electric in the fading afternoon sunlight as though he were in his concert hall. Amy watched from the doorway, fiercely in love again with every flying curl and perfectly poised finger.

The piece ended on a triumphant note, and from up and down the silent street came the sound of clapping and cheering, shouts of "Bravo!” and “ _Un autre, s'il vous plait, Maestro, un autre!”_

Amy clapped, wildly and enthusiastically, and Laurie turned around, surprised to see her there, half-rising from his seat. “Don’t neglect your public,” she urged, sitting down on the couch and nodding out the window. Laurie smiled, sat back down, and launched into Scott Joplin, the whole street entranced.

They didn’t have much to share, but Laurie had this. And in the moment, it was enough.

When Laurie finished his impromptu concert several songs later, Amy was no longer on the couch, but in the kitchen, rummaging through cabinets and grouping things on counters. “Are you cleaning in here, too?” Laurie asked, rummaging in the cabinet for a water glass. “I wasn’t aware a virus could hide behind pasta boxes.”

“How do you feel about going on an adventure?” Amy asked, her eyes bright. “We need one more ingredient and we can make crepes. Genius needs to eat.”

Her husband could not help but smile, and kissed her on the cheek. “An adventure it is, then.”

–

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amy obviously has a killer Instagram in this universe. I’m not certain, but I think Marmee is a social worker. And if you’re wondering what would Marmee do, the answer is don’t buy the last package of toilet paper, and also maybe one of the things mentioned in this fic. Check with a local medical center before sewing masks, the blood bank really does have a shortage of blood, and local food banks could use a little love.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jo will tell you that 'struggle' isn't a word that she's familiar with - but Friedrich knows when Jo is struggling.

It sounded as though a large chunk of hell had broken loose, and it was saying something, in a house as large as Plumfield, that Freidrich could hear it falling from the kitchen.

Visions of thrown laptops dancing in his head, he rerouted past the study, glancing inside to make sure that emergency services (or the electronics store) wouldn't have to be called.

It wasn't, in fact, the laptop, only a very large, heavy paperweight that was a relic of Uncle Marsh and of no particular value to Jo except in that Aunt Marsh had once declared it ugly, thereby making it one of Jo's favorite objects, and it was now lying in front of the desk where it had been shoved from the worksurface in frustration. As for Jo herself, she was facedown in her keyboard, defeated.

"Liebling?"

"It's no use," came the muffled reply from the desk. "I can't write." The miserable lump moved slightly to take her forehead off the spacebar, which had taken the opportunity afforded by its prolonged occupation to create four pages of blank air. "I've been staring at the same page for hours and nothing's coming."

Friedrich, sensing this was not going to be solved from the hallway, brought his coffee inside with him.

"How many years have I been saying that when I'm stuck inside I'll finally have time to write my sequel? Well, now I am literally stuck inside and - poof, nothing." She sat up quickly, pointing a declarative finger at him. "And before you say a word about collective trauma -

"-I wasn't going to -"

"-I am doing just fine, I am housed and fed and I'm not worrying about my next paycheck and I am not undergoing trauma!"

Friedrich refrained (at great expense) to keep from eye-rolling or other visual sarcasms. For all that Jo might proclaim that she hated people, she was one of the few people on the planet he could legitimately say found energy in the company of others - and in helping them. He and Marmee had predicted at the outset of this that Jo would crack - and voila, the day was here. (Now was not the time for I-told-you-sos.)

"But you're worried about your sister," he reminded gently. (This was true, and they both knew it - Jo had spent an hour on the phone yesterday with Meg, and another hour after that with Marmee trying to wrangle a schedule for grocery delivery to the Bungalow, as well as puzzles and games and scheduled FaceTimes with the twins. "And you're worried about your students, and your parents, and the hospital staff, and -" 

"Okay, fine, I'm worried! That's not the same thing as trauma, Fred."

 _But you've also been thinking a lot about Beth, and how you're glad she isn't here to see this,_ he thought silently to himself. _And that was a trauma for you, even if you won't call it that._ He substituted a deep breath for another eye-roll. "Let's take a walk."

"Fred, I don't need -"

"Let's take a walk," He repeated, pulling her bodily from her chair and slowly dancing with her around the desk until the tension in her shoulders broke a little and she actually joined him in their slow rotation on the Turkish rug. "The ramps will be starting and we can take pictures of the wildflowers and send them to Amy so she can be jealous she's not here. We've got a whole fifty acres and we haven't explored them today." He leaned out a little and brushed a flyaway out of Jo's forehead and smiled. "Maybe we'll find something for you to write about outside."

Jo looked at him with a resigned smile, leaning in to kiss his cheek with uncharacteristic violence. "I hate you," she pronounced, with a smile. "You're a bastard, and I hate you." 

He accepted this in the spirit he knew it was offered, the anger of being seen, of being truly known. "I know." 

Jo paused for a moment, looking at the doorframe and then following him down the hallway. "You talked with my mother about this, didn't you?" she accused, sourly, going to get her shoes and checking out the window to see if a coat was necessary.

"We can leave some flowers on her porch," came the reply, and Jo threw a shoe at her husband from the pile at the door, feeling just the smallest bit of satisfaction as it hit his shin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ramps are a particularly tasty wild edible (think wild onion) found in the eastern United States; they often begin growing in early April. Wildflower season is also just beginning to sprout, too - in my neighborhood I can see squill, bloodroot, mayapple, trillium, and trout lily in some yards - as well as daffodils and hyacinths, cherries, magnolias, and redbuds.
> 
> Sometimes we all need someone else (and sometimes that someone else has to be us, unfortunately) to tell us to unplug, to step away, to do nothing. Worrying does require a lot of bandwidth from us, and some people have more things to worry about. It's snowing by me today, so sadly there will be no wildflowers, but I do think I myself need a walk. How can you be gentle with yourself today?


End file.
